Philly homicides on track for 45-year low

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Police say homicides in long-deadly Philadelphia are on track to mark the lowest midyear total in nearly half a century.

Police had recorded 115 homicides as of Friday, with three days left in the six-month period — a 38 percent drop from the same period last year, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported.

Mayor Michael Nutter, top police officials and prosecutors as well as criminal justice specialists credit a new emphasis on data-driven policing, a crackdown on gun crimes and sweeping changes in the criminal courts. In particular, police and prosecutors have been targeting so-called hot spots — areas identified as centers of criminal activity.

If the trend keeps up through the rest of the year, the annual homicide toll would be lower than at any time since 1968. The paper said its analysis of city homicide figures over the last half-century indicates that midyear results generally mirror the second half of the year.

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The homicide decline reflects a general decline in violent crime, with violent robberies and serious assaults also down sharply.

Commissioner Charles Ramsey told the paper that the department has been trying to attack crime in a smarter fashion, using sophisticated computer mapping and data analysis to anticipate crime trends and get ahead of them.

“I’ve been around for a long time, and what (once) passed for analysis was simply counting crime,” he said. “Now we are actually analyzing crime and trying to learn from that analysis ways in which we can be more effective and tweak our strategy.”

District Attorney Seth Williams, who called the figures “a sign of hope,” launched a program last year aimed at using crime statistics and other intelligence to identify and crack down on the most serious gun criminals, imposing harsher penalties on those convicted of carrying an illegal firearm.

“If you’re doing a better job on the guys carrying guns, you’re going to have an impact on murder,” said Brian Lentz, the assistant district attorney who heads the crackdown.

Municipal judges at the urging of prosecutors have imposed significantly higher bail on people charged with illegal gun possession, and prosecutors have also been using gun arrests as a reason to jail suspects as probation violators and winning longer sentences for new convictions.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court, meanwhile, instituted changes aimed at curbing defense efforts to win cases through delay, set up a special court to crack down on fugitives, brought in firms to collect millions of dollars in unpaid bail and took steps to attack witness intimidation, including authorizing the use of secret indicting grand juries.

Bilal Qayyum, president of the Father’s Day Rally Committee, a group that works to curb violence, credits not only the efforts of police, prosecutors, and judges but also factors as improved trauma care at city hospitals and neighborhood anger at violence.

“I just think it’s a combination of all of these efforts at work,” he said. “We’re beginning to see the impact.”